


Who and Whose: A Superhero Love Dodecahedron

by ShawnaCanon



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, Future Fic, Miraculous Team, New Miraculous Holders, Post-Hawk Moth Defeat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2020-11-15 11:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20865791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShawnaCanon/pseuds/ShawnaCanon
Summary: Hawk Moth is defeated, and the partnership of Ladybug and Cat Noir breaks up—all without the pair ever revealing their identities to each other.Fourteen years later, Marinette and Adrien are happily married when a new villain appears and Ladybug and Cat Noir are called back to action. This time, the villain requires a whole team of superheroes to fight it.Keeping his superhero identity secret from Marinette is hard enough, but Adrien’s guilt is compounded by the fact that it seems he’s still madly in love with Ladybug.And then there’s Cockerel, who keeps flirting with their team leader, which should not annoy Cat Noir but does. And Luka, Marinette’s good friend who seems to be getting closer to her the more Adrien pulls away. And 19-year-old Manon, who’s quite simply a force to be reckoned with.And Gabriel, the former Hawk Moth, who claims to have given up on saving his wife but still hasn’t moved on with Nathalie, which makes Adrien wonder how reformed his father really is.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story splits off into an AU just prior to the 2-part season 3 finale, so it's liable to not be canon-compliant with any episodes after that point. I hope to get it written and posted before any season 4 episodes air, but in the event that doesn't happen, I still intend to write it in full before watching any new episodes. (I have a vision in mind for it, and I don't want to get thrown off by new developments/revelations and end up with an abandoned fic.) 
> 
> I write based ONLY on the actual English version of the show, as aired, and my own thoughts about it. No fanon, no popular theories or non-canonical ships treated as canon, no Twitter or Instagram posts, none of that. Pure canon only and my own ideas. So, please don't post any spoilers for season 4 episodes or "so-and-so said on Twitter" or "but what about [popular fanon trope]" or anything like that. I'll moderate out any such comments.

The raw fury in Hawk Moth’s eyes was almost more terrifying than his iron grip on Cat Noir’s neck. “I’m going to kill you, boy,” Hawk Moth said in a low, intense growl. It wasn’t the same tone Cat Noir was used to. It wasn’t the one Hawk Moth used when he was spewing melodramatic threats or boasting about how he’d definitely have their Miraculouses any day now. It was lower and rougher. And Cat Noir knew he meant every word.

“I’m sorry,” Cat Noir said reflexively. “I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

Mayura lay on the rubble-strewn floor a dozen yards away—not completley unmoving, but not getting up. Cat Noir hadn’t seen that her knees were buckling until the instant before his fist had made contact. The punch alone shouldn’t have been enough to lay her out like that. But whatever was wrong with her, Hawk Moth wasn’t going to give him the time to find out.

_Hurry, Ladybug_, he thought. It had only been a matter of minutes since they’d split up—her to chase the sentimonster and him to go after the one controlling it. Mayura had been alone at the time, and Cat Noir had used his Cataclysm to collapse the ground beneath them just so he could throw off her escape and give himself a few seconds to get the drop on her. They’d ended up in a cavern of rock and concrete. With all the stone and debris, he couldn’t tell what the place had been before he’d smashed it all to pieces.

Cat Noir had no idea when Hawk Moth had shown up, but now his stick was in Hawk Moth’s hand and they were standing on a pile of debris twenty feet above the floor of the mysterious cavern. Or rather, Hawk Moth was standing. Cat Noir was dangling from Hawk Moth’s grasp.

“I don’t care what you meant,” Hawk Moth growled. “I’ve had enough of you. I’m sick of having my plans thwarted by children. That ends today.”

Hawk Moth’s anger wasn’t lessening, but Cat Noir was getting over the shock of it, which meant he had some free brain space to consider his options. His stick was gone, he couldn’t get any leverage from the floor, and Hawk Moth was strong enough that Cat Noir’s struggles weren’t doing much good. But Hawk Moth was so angry, he wasn’t thinking clearly, and Cat Noir could see where he’d left himself wide open. The villain’s arms were longer than his, but Cat Noir could work around that.

“I think you’re right,” Cat Noir agreed, not allowing his eyes break contact with his enemy’s. He couldn’t give Hawk Moth even an instant’s warning.

Cat Noir kicked one foot as hard as he could into Hawk Moth’s ribs. Hawk Moth didn’t release him, but he let out a small grunt and his body contracted a little in reflex. Which meant the outstretched arm holding onto Cat Noir pulled him in closer to the man’s body. Just enough for Cat Noir to reach out and snatch the butterfly pin from Hawk Moth’s collar.

A thrill of victory lit up inside Cat Noir at the same moment the flash of transformation swept over Hawk Moth. Cat Noir’s feet touched down on the pile of rubble as the villain’s enhanced strength left him, though he didn’t release his grip on Cat Noir’s neck. Cat Noir clutched the Butterfly Miraculous tighter and shoved his hand behind his back so the man couldn’t grab it back.

Cat Noir was already grinning in triumph, a mocking laugh about to burst from his lungs, when he looked into his enemy’s face, and the laugh died in his mouth.

The world spun around him. Reality itself unhinged.

_It can’t be. It has to be a mistake. Maybe he was akumatized?_ But that wasn’t how akumas worked at all. _Maybe he’s a sentimonster?_ That was more likely. Cat Noir had been fooled by a human-looking sentimonster before. Except Mayura was down—maybe unconscious. Definitely in no shape to be controlling a sentimonster.

The grip on his neck suddenly tightened, but Cat Noir barely felt it now. Gabriel opened his mouth, but whatever he was about to say, he didn’t get the chance.

A swarm of magical butterflies flowed into the cavern, sweeping over everything in an instant, and the landscape changed. The pile of rubble they were standing on was gone, replaced by a metal walkway with a railing. The railing appeared between Cat Noir and Gabriel.

Cat Noir didn’t have the time to process what that meant before the hand on his neck was gone and Gabriel fell straight down.

“No!” Cat Noir reached for him over the railing, missing Gabriel’s arm but catching hold of his own stick which Gabriel had stretched up between them. “Hang on!” Cat Noir shouted to him. It was darker in the cavern now, lit only by some emergency lights on the wall, but it was plenty to see the fear in Gabriel’s face. “I’ve got you.” But the events of the last few seconds had been so distracting, Cat Noir hadn’t heard the beeping of his ring.

Before Cat Noir could pull Gabriel up over the railing and onto the walkway, there was another flash of transformation magic, and his stick disappeared. As Adrien watched his father plumet to the cavern floor, he saw the recognition and shock on Gabriel’s face.

And then there was a sickening thud and crack.

“Father!” Adrien shouted. There was no reply. He ran down the walkway to a set of metal stairs, leaping down them to the cavern floor. As he passed the prone form of Mayura, a sick suspicion twisted his gut, and he knelt beside her. She didn’t resist as he plucked the Peacock Miraculous from her chest and another flash of transformation illuminated the cavern. Adrien’s chest tightened, and he wanted to sob. “Nathalie.”

She groaned softly but didn’t open her eyes.

He tucked the two stolen Miraculouses into his pocket and went to where his father lay on the ground. “Father?” Still no answer, so Adrien knelt beside him. Closer now, he saw that Gabriel’s eyes were open.

“I can’t feel my legs, son,” he said calmly. “But my arm is broken.”

“Father?” Adrien said. He couldn’t stop the tears this time. “Why—Why—?” There were so many questions. He didn’t even know how to start.

“For your mother.”

Adrien blinked, clearing the tears from his eyes. “What?”

“Emilie is alive, Adrien. Comatose, but alive.”

Adrien’s head spun again. “But you said she was dead! Everyone said she was dead!”

“What else could we say? The coma isn’t natural. It was caused by the damaged Peacock Miraculous.”

The urge to pull said Miraculous from his pocket and inspect it was overwhelming, but somehow it seemed like a bad idea, so Adrien got up and rubbed at his head instead. “Father, what are you saying? What’s going on?”

“How is Nathalie?”

“She’s—she’s hurt.” His gut wrenched as he remembered how he’d punched her. Even if she had been a supervillain at the time, even if he hadn’t known she was weakened when he’d done it, he hated the thought of hitting her while she was down. He _liked_ Nathalie. “She needs a doctor. You both do.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and saw that he had no signal down here. He’d need to get out and to the surface before he could make the call.

“Yes,” Gabriel agreed. “Though I doubt it will do much good. Her condition is caused by magic. It’s the same thing that happened to your mother. I’ve told Nathalie to stop using it, but she refuses to listen.” He paused before adding, “At least now she’ll have to stop.”

“I’m going to go call for help,” Adrien told him.

He hadn’t taken two steps before Gabriel said, “Wait.”

Adrien did, coming back to look down at his father. It was so strange to see him weak and vulnerable like this.

“Was it always you?” Gabriel asked.

“Yeah,” Adrien said. His throat had gone so tight, it was hard to get the words out. “You?”

“Yes.”

Adrien’s grip on his phone tightned. “I have to go make the call.”

Gabriel didn’t stop him this time. Adrien watched his phone as he wound his way through underground sewer tunnels. He didn’t have to get all the way to the surface before he could get a decent signal, and he remembered enough of the chase here to give the ambulance rough directions. They wanted him to stay on the line, but he was afraid of what would happen if he left his father and Nathalie for too long. Though whether his greater fear was that they’d die or that they’d escape, he couldn’t say.

He stopped on his way through the cavern to check on Nathalie again. He touched her cheek. It was warm, which seemed like a good sign.

She opened her eyes. “Adrien? What are you doing here?”

If she hadn’t been aware enough to notice, he didn’t see any point in telling her. Though his father probably would. “I’m here to help. The ambulance is coming. Can you hold on until then?”

“Yes. Where is . . .” She was obviously desperate to ask but unsure which name to use.

“Father’s here. He’s alive, but hurt. The ambulance is coming for both of you.”

That satisfied her enough that her eyes slid closed. She must have been in bad shape if knowing Gabriel was alive was enough, even if Adrien hadn’t explained anything about how his father had been hurt.

Adrien sat down beside his father, who hadn’t moved an inch. Gabriel was on his back, but the angle of one arm was wrong, and there was something not quite natural about the way his legs were arranged.

“I’m sorry, son,” Gabriel said.

Adrien’s eyes widened in shock. “You are?”

“If I had known it was you . . . I’ve done all of this to bring Emilie back to us, but every time, I was putting you in danger. And just now, I was about to kill you with my own hands. If Emilie knew what I’ve done to you, she would never forgive me.”

“She’s really alive?”

“Technically. But without the wish I could have gotten with the combined power of the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculouses, she’s as good as dead.”

“That’s really what you wanted them for?”

“Of course.”

What if he was telling the truth? Adrien missed his mother every day. What if he could have her back, as simple as that? He already had one half of what Gabriel needed. It wouldn’t be that hard to get Ladybug’s Miraculous. She trusted him, so—

_No._ How could he think that, even for a moment? His father probably wasn’t even right about what would happen. Bringing people back to life was never that straightforward in any stories.

“Father,” Adrien said, “if you’re sorry, does that mean you’re going to stop being Hawk Moth?”

“You took my Miraculous. I don’t have much choice, do I?”

“That’s not what I asked. Will you stop willingly?”

“What does it matter?”

Adrien clenched his fists in frustration. “It matters because I don’t want you to be a villain!”

Gabriel chuckled weakly, then stopped and groaned in pain. “Is that what I am, son? A villain?”

“Yes! You turned people into monsters! You terrorized Paris!”

“Does it matter that I did it for the right reasons?”

“There are no right reasons!”

“You don’t want her back?”

“Not—Not at that price!”

Gabriel didn’t respond for a long time. Then he said, “I would stop. Willingly. I didn’t know what I was risking.” His good hand rose off the floor and wrapped around Adrien’s upper arm. “I love you, son. I never meant to put you in danger.”

“You put me in danger even when I was just myself. Remember turning my bodyguard into a giant gorilla? Or sending Kagami after me? Or all the other times you akumatized the people around me?” Now that he knew his father was Hawk Moth, Adrien was replaying every single akuma attack, and the whole thing made even less sense.

“I . . . had my reasons.”

“Care to explain them to me?”

“You know, I’m in quite a lot of pain right now, Adrien. Maybe that could wait until I’m out of the hospital. You can visit me in prison some time, and I can tell you all about it.”

Prison? The thought of his father in prison made Adrien feel hollow. He barely saw his father as it was. And what would that mean for Nathalie and—No, she’d probably be there, too. She was Mayura, after all. But where would Adrien live? What would he do? Would he have to leave his friends?

It was the right thing. The just thing. Gabriel had done a whole lot of wrong to a whole lot of people, and he fully deserved to be punished for it. No matter how much it would upset Adrien and disrupt his life, justice was more important.

Adrien knew all of that, but . . . this was his father.

“You don’t have to go to prison,” he said in a near whisper.

Gabriel’s eyes snapped to his. “Go on.”

“Father . . . I know I should, but . . . I don’t want to turn you in. You . . . you said you would stop. And I have your Miraculous.” Adrien could hear the uncertainty in his voice. He stiffened his spine and pushed the sight of his father out of his awareness. This was Hawk Moth he was dealing with, and Cat Noir was not afraid of Hawk Moth. “You’re defeated, Hawk Moth. I have your Miraculous, and you’re not getting it back. So I’ll make a deal with you. If you promise not to ever try to find it or any other Miraculous—or anything else that would give you that kind of power—and to never deliberately put people in danger again . . . then I won’t turn you in.”

His father looked up at him, one corner of his mouth lifting the tiniest bit, and said, “I agree to your terms, son.”

By the time the paramedics took Gabriel and Nathalie away, Adrien was already regretting his bargain. Not enough to try to reneg on it, but enough to feel guilty about it. But there wasn’t really anything else he could have done. He couldn’t send his own father to prison, not when Gabriel had already promised to stop hurting people. It was that simple.


	2. Chapter 2

As soon as she’d given Tikki a snack, Marinette transformed into Ladybug and ran off in the direction Cat Noir had gone following Mayura. But she didn’t see any sign of her partner duking it out with a villain. Unless Cat Noir had chased Mayura for miles—which was entirely possible—in which case Ladybug could be here all day searching. She pulled out her yo-yo and tried to call him. It went to voicemail.

“Cat Noir, I’m looking for you, but I can’t find you. Are you still fighting Mayura? Let me know if you need help.”

For the next ten minutes, she swung around the city, looking for her partner and Mayura, but everything seemed totally normal. Which probably meant Mayura had gotten away like she always did. Ladybug wasn’t sure why Cat Noir wasn’t responding to her, but if he’d needed to feed Plagg and then something had come up, he might not have thought he’d had a reason to transform again.

_Except to let your partner know you’re okay_, she thought, scowling. It was still broad daylight, so she had to be careful going home and slipping into her room. At least it was Saturday, so she hadn’t had to worry about getting in and out of school, and her parents were busy in the bakery. Not wanting to miss Cat Noir’s call if he did return hers, she spent the next couple hours doing homework as Ladybug.

Finally, her yo-yo chirped. “It’s about time,” she answered. “I take it you’re not dead.”

“We need to meet.” Cat Noir’s voice was serious to the point of emotionlessness. Which was so unlike him, Ladybug dropped her pencil onto her desk.

“What is it?”

“I want to tell you in person. Where are you?”

She couldn’t very well say she was in Marinette’s room above the bakery, even though Cat Noir knew exactly where that was and could meet her there easily. “Just out and about.”

He asked to meet at the park by her house. By the time she climbed up to the roof and slipped around the side of the building so it wasn’t totally obvious where she was coming from, he was already waiting for her on a bench.

#

Cat Noir watched Ladybug swing in from nowhere and drop to the ground in front of him with more grace and precision than an Olympic gymnast. Intellectually, he know most of that must have been the Miraculous, but he couldn’t help thinking she had at least some of that grace as her normal self. Maybe she was a ballet dancer in her regular life.

How could any person be so beautiful and amazing?

“What are you staring at?”

“What’s not worth staring at, Milady?”

She sat beside him. “Cat Noir, are you okay?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You don’t seem like yourself.”

“Who do I seem like?”

She considered him. “I don’t know. Someone more serious than you.”

“I can be serious, Ladybug.”

“I know, but . . . What did you want to tell me?”

He clasped and unclasped his hands in his lap. “I’m . . . not really sure how to tell you this.”

“If you were anyone else, I’d say it sounded like you were gearing up for a love confession,” she said, trying to be flippant, but he could hear the strain in her tone. She was worried. “But you’ve already told me you love me, so that can’t be it.”

“I’ll tell you that as many times as you’d like, Milady, but no. That isn’t what I’m trying to say right now.”

“Is someone hurt?”

He winced before he could hide it.

She put her hand on his arm urgently. “Who’s hurt? What happened? Did Mayura hurt you?” Ladybug raked her eyes up and down him, looking for injuries.

“Not me, Ladybug. I’m fine. But . . . Well . . . We won.”

She blinked at him several times. “Won what?”

“The war.”

“Which war?”

“The one against Hawk Moth.”

She cocked her head and stared at him. “Cat Noir, I don’t understand anything you’re saying right now.”

“Hawk Moth won’t be bothering anyone anymore.”

Ladybug stiffened beside him. “Details, Cat. What does that mean?”

He’d really hoped she wouldn’t make him go into details so that he wouldn’t have to lie to her, but he should have known better. “While I was fighting Mayura, Hawk Moth showed up.”

“In person?”

He nodded. “I fought him.”

Again, she seemed to search him for injuries. “And?!”

“And . . . he died.”

She gasped.

“It was an accident. No one’s fault. While we were fighting, I managed to grab his Miraculous, and . . . he fell. It was after you did your Miraculous Ladybug thing, so . . . it didn’t get fixed.”

Ladybug’s mouth was hanging open. “You fought Hawk Moth, managed to take his Miraculous, and then he fell to his death?”

He nodded.

“That’s horrible! I mean, yeah, we wanted to beat him and stop him, but . . .”

“I know.”

She hugged him. “It wasn’t your fault. I know you would have saved him if you’d been able to.”

He nodded and tried not to enjoy the hug. He didn’t deserve to enjoy a hug gotten though dishonesty.

When she released him, she asked, “Does that mean you saw who he was?”

And here was the most important lie. “I saw, but I didn’t recognize him. And . . . well, we were near the Seine, and his body somehow rolled in and got washed away. I’m sure he was dead when it happened, though. Things were . . . twisted at the wrong angles.”

Ladybug shook her head in shock. “I can’t believe it. After all this time, that everything would end just like that?”

Everything . . . end? Was that what this meant?

“I want to believe this is all some kind of prank, Cat, but I don’t think you’re a good enough actor to pull off that face you’re making right now unless it’s real.”

“This definitely isn’t a prank, Ladybug.” He pulled out the Butterfly and Peacock Miraculouses and held them out to her.

She stared at them like they were made of diamond. “You got them both?”

“After Hawk Moth . . . died . . . Mayura looked really upset. She just threw down her Miraculous and ran off. I didn’t get a good look at her after she transformed, so . . . I guess she escaped for good.”

Ladybug took the two Miraculouses and inspected them as if trying to determine if they were fake.

“Take them to Master Fu. I’m sure he can verify they’re the real ones. You probably need to give them back to him anyway, so he can put them where they belong.”

“Cat Noir,” she said solemnly, “you should come with me. If Hawk Moth’s really gone and the Miraculouses he had have been recovered, then . . . there’s no more need for Ladybug and Cat Noir. We’ll need to give up our Miraculouses, too.”

He physically recoiled from her words. So, that really was what she’d meant. He’d had a vague idea that no longer having villains to fight would mean the end of his time with Ladybug, but he hadn’t let himself think about it long enough to form anything really solid. And he definitely hadn’t considered that it would mean giving up a part of his own identity. One of his favorite parts, too. “I can’t.”

“Cat Noir, you have to. We both have to.”

“I know you think that. But I can’t.”

She frowned at him. “The Miraculous isn’t yours to keep. Master Fu entrusted it to you.”

“I know. I know. But I still need it.”

“For what? Hawk Moth’s gone. Our job is done.”

‘For what?’ was a good question but not one he could answer. He couldn’t tell her that Hawk Moth was actually still alive, or that Cat Noir only _hoped_ he was actually going to reform, or that he needed the power to physically stop his father if Gabriel did try to go back on his word. Because only by ensuring he had the power to enforce his father’s compliance with their deal could Cat Noir really, honestly claim that Hawk Moth would never bother anyone again. And that was the key point. That was the thing that needed to stay true, even if everything else he was saying was a lie. And that was the one and only reason Ladybug needed in order to try to make Cat Noir give up his Miraculous.

It was a vicious circle of lies and logic.

“I can’t tell you why I need it,” Cat Noir said.

He hated the look on Ladybug’s face. It was anger and disappointment and shame all mixed together, and she was feeling it about _him_.

Her expression softened. “Cat Noir, come on. Let’s go together to Master Fu’s, and let him decide if he wants us to give our Miraculouses back or not. And if he does, then . . . well, then I guess there won’t be any more need to hide our identities from each other. You’ve wanted us to share that for a long time, but it’s been too important to keep the secrets safe. But if Hawk Moth’s gone and we won’t be superheroes anymore, there’s no reason to keep it a secret—not from each other anyway. So, what do you say?”

She was trying to bribe him with the second-best thing she could possibly offer. And it wasn’t like her love was something she could really use to barter with, so he wouldn’t have believed that even if she’d tried to offer it—which she would never do in a million years. But her identity . . . Oh, he wanted to know so badly. He’d had so many chances to peek, but he’d held back out of respect for her wishes. If he knew who she was, maybe he’d have a chance to win her even after they weren’t working together. Maybe—and now he was really dreaming—she was even a fan of his. Maybe she’d actually _want_ him once she knew who he was.

“No.” It was the hardest syllable he’d ever uttered in his life. But keeping her and the rest of the world safe from even the possibility of what his father might do was too important. And even though a part of him hated his father for making him lie to Ladybug, he still couldn’t bring himself to turn against his own father. Not even if Gabriel deserved it. Even though he sometimes hated his father—or at least his father’s actions—Gabriel was still his father, and maybe, _finally_, he’d have a chance to build a relationship with him. “I—I promise I won’t use it, Ladybug. Not unless it’s really necessary. I only . . . need to have it.” The thought of giving up that part of himself and of giving up Plagg hurt badly, but he knew she was right about that, at least. He really shouldn’t be Cat Noir only for his own sake.

But to her, apparently, his concession had sounded only like an excuse. The softness in Ladybug’s face turned hard and cold. She stood to look down at him. “I thought you were better than this, Cat Noir. I really did. I thought you understood the responsibility we had. I thought . . . I thought you were someone I respected.” Her words were like lashes across his heart. He’d rather have taken forty lashes from an actual whip than hear them. She turned, but before she walked away, she said over her shoulder, “Miraculouses should never be used for selfish reasons, Cat Noir. Even if it seems innocent. Don’t become someone I’ll have to take down.”

Ladybug launched her yo-yo into the air and swung away.

He could have revealed his name, at least, so she could find him if she ever wanted to, so their ties weren’t severed completely. He could have followed after her or even just shouted, “I’m Adrien Agreste!” He could have forced his identity on her, but he knew that would be the wrong thing to do. It was right there in the word ‘force’. Besides, it wouldn’t do any good. If she disliked Cat Noir now, that was bad enough. He didn’t think he could keep on living if he knew that Ladybug disliked Cat Noir _and_ Adrien.

Cat Noir sat on the park bench, staring into the space in front of him as his heart shattered into a thousand jagged shards. _I’ll never see her again_, he realized. _I’ll never see her again. I’ll never see her again._ That thought ran through his head for what must have been minutes. Eventually, he remembered that he was in a park, there were people around, and if he broke down in public it would be all over the internet and TV within minutes.

He managed to keep it together long enough to go home, leap through the window of his bedroom, and mutter, “Plagg, claws in,” before he collapsed face-first on his bed.

“Adrien, it’s not too late,” said Plagg’s voice close to his ear. “You could still follow her. I’m not saying I want to leave you, but maybe you could convince her and Master Fu—”

Adrien rolled onto his side to face his kwami. “How, Plagg? They don’t know about Father, and I can’t tell them.”

“Why not? Your dad’s a jerk and a supervillain. You’re going to pick him over the girl you love?”

Adrien shoved his face back into his pillow. He couldn’t expect Plagg to understand. Adrien didn’t really understand it himself. And if he’d thought it through enough to consider that loyalty to his father might require betraying Ladybug, he probably wouldn’t have made that deal with him.

Might not have.

But it didn’t matter, because it was too late to change his mind now.

He sat up. “I made my decision, Plagg. And I’ll live with the consequences.” Wasn’t that part of being a hero?

There was no point putting it off any longer. He grasped his Miraculous ring between thumb and finger.

“Adrien,” Plagg said, “are you sure you want to do this?”

“I don’t really have a choice, Plagg. Despite what Ladybug thinks of me now, I do try to be responsible. If there’s no supervillain to fight, there’s no good reason to keep my superpowers. If a real threat that needs Cat Noir shows up, then we’ll see each other again. And if not . . . I’ll somehow make sure you and the Miraculous get back to a Guardian.” He began to slide the ring off his finger.

A soft, warm shape glomped onto his face. Plagg was hugging him. “I’m gonna miss you, Adrien.”

The tears Adrien had been fighting to hold back began to leak from his eyes. “I’m gonna miss you, too, Plagg. Thanks for everything.”

He took off the ring, and Plagg was sucked back into it. Adrien knew exactly where he kept the box the Miraculous had come in, so it didn’t take him long to find it and put the ring back in the box. He found the safest place he could to hide it, then returned to his bed and finally, completely broke down.


	3. Chapter 3

“Hawk Moth is dead?” Master Fu asked, giving the two Miraculouses in his hand a dubious look.

“That’s what Cat Noir says, and why would he lie about it?” Marinette answered. The two of them were standing in the supply closet of a movie theatre. Not exactly the most auspicious place for this conversation that she could have imagined.

Wayzz hovered closer to the Butterfly and Peacock Miraculouses. “They’re real, Master.”

Master Fu sighed. “Then it’s finally over.” He pulled out the Miracle Box and reverently set the two Miraculouses inside. Then he reached up and laid a hand on Marinette’s shoulder. “Good work, Marinette. You were a wonderful Ladybug. Now, give me your Miraculous so I can return it to the box.”

An electric shock of panic zipped through her body. She’d expected him to ask, had been fully prepared for it. Or so she’d thought. But when he actually said the words and held out his hand, something inside her recoiled almost violently at the idea of giving up her Miraculous. It wasn’t the power. It was the sense of purpose, that she was really doing something good in the world. It was the sense that she was her best self—someone so much better than plain old Marinette that she was nearly a different person—only when she was Ladybug. And it was Tikki, one of her best friends.

The second after the rush of panic came crushing guilt. This must have been what Cat Noir had felt. She’d judged him so harshly for it, and now here she was, having the same reaction.

But not _wanting_ to do something and not _doing_ something were different. She didn’t want to give up her Miraculous, but . . . she would. She had to. It was time.

She raised her hands to remove the earrings—far too slowly—and said, “Are you sure? Maybe we should hang onto them a little while longer, just in case another supervillain shows up.”

Something of her emotions must have been showing on her face, because Master Fu’s expression turned sympathetic. “On second thought . . .”

Marinette’s hands fell to her sides.

“I’ve been wanting to make you the Guardian of the Miraculouses. Maybe now is the time to make it official.”

“What?”

“If Ladybug, Cat Noir, and the other Miraculous holders aren’t needed here any longer, then neither am I. You may not have had as much training as I would have liked, but neither did I. I believe you will do your best and that your best will be good enough. I have faith in you, Marinette.”

“But Master Fu, what am I gonna do with a box of Miraculouses?”

“Guard it, of course. Keep it safe. And, if a threat comes which requires superheroes to defeat it, use your good judgement in entrusting the Miraculouses to others.”

“But—but—” This was too much, too soon. She wasn’t ready to become a Guardian! She only wanted to keep being Ladybug!

“Wayzz,” said Master Fu, “thank you for being with me all these years.”

“It has been an honor, Master,” the kwami said with a small bow in the air.

Master Fu removed his bracelet, which sucked Wayzz into it, and placed it in the box. Then he closed the Miracle Box and handed it to Marinette.

She held it against her chest like it was a life jacket and she was drowning, just because it was the only thing she had to hold onto.

“I know you’ll do what’s right, Marinette,” said Master Fu.

“Wait, why do you sound like you’re leaving? You’ll still be here if I need help, right?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “I have places to go and a woman who’s been waiting for me far longer than she ever should have had to.”

“But—but—”

Master Fu opened the door of the supply closet, gave Marinette a departing wave, and left.

Marinette stood alone in the closet, trying to make sense of everything that had happened in the last hour. It was too much. Her brain couldn’t process it.

“You’ll be fine, Marinette,” said Tikki.

“Will I?” Marinette cheeped.

“Yes. I believe in you.”

Marinette smiled at her friend. “Thanks, Tikki. Anyway, it looks like I don’t have a choice. So all I can do is do my best.”

She made it home without losing the Miracle Box, at least. After she put it somewhere not immediately visible, she transformed back into Ladybug and tried to call Cat Noir with her yo-yo. He didn’t answer, and she had to leave a voicemail.

“Cat Noir, I’m sorry. I was too harsh with you earlier. Something else has happened, and I think we should talk about it. Contact me as soon as you get this message.”

She stayed in her costume for the rest of the evening, but Cat Noir didn’t get back to her.

He didn’t contact her the next day, either.

“Is he sulking?” she asked Tikki as she walked to school on Monday. “Or maybe he really hasn’t transformed since we talked?”

“I don’t think he’d refuse to talk to you if he knew you wanted to talk,” Tikki offered.

Marinette thought she was probably right, which meant that most likely, Cat Noir hadn’t transformed to get her message yet. Which, she told herself, wasn’t too unusual, since it had only been a couple days and nothing urgent had come up to need either of them.

As soon as she stepped into class, she saw that something was wrong with Adrien. Even without being hyper-attuned to him like she was, she could have seen that he was sad. All her worries about Cat Noir vanished, replaced with worry for Adrien. She wanted to ask what was wrong but was too nervous to do so. What if he thought she was prying? So she sat in her desk behind him, staring at the back of his head like it could give her answers.

“Dude, you all right?” Nino asked Adrien as he slid into the seat beside him. “I’d say you look like your dog died, but you don’t have a dog.”

Adrien looked a little surprised by the question. “Oh, I . . . Well, it’s my dad. He . . . he fell. Down the stairs, at home.”

Marinette gasped. Beside her, Alya didn’t hesitate to insert herself into the boys’ conversation. “What? Is he all right?”

Adrien turned in his chair to include both Alya and Marinette, but looked a little shy about doing so. “Not . . . No. He’s still in the hospital. He broke some bones, which should heal, but . . . they don’t think he’ll be able to walk again.”

Marinette’s hands flew to her mouth. “Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry! That’s terrible!”

Adrien gave her a small, grateful smile.

Since the class was close to starting, there were enough other people there that the conversation soon engulfed the whole room as the news spread.

By that evening, it was even on the news. Adrien’s father was famous, after all. He ended up having to issue a video statement from his hospital room assuring everyone that he was fine and would not let this injury affect his business in any way.

But as time passed, Adrien still seemed sad, and Marinette wasn’t feeling so peppy herself.

She sat in her room a week and a half after she’d sent her first message to Cat Noir telling him she wanted to talk. In the time since, she’d sent another five voicemails and ten texts. He hadn’t responded to any of them, nor had there been any news or sightings of him anywhere that she could find. Even the Ladyblog was beginning to note the absence of the two superheroes—and of any supervillains.

“Tikki,” Marinette said, “do you think he’s gotten any of my messages?”

“He did promise you he wouldn’t be Cat Noir anymore unless he had to,” Tikki reminded her.

“But did he have to start _right then_?” She was annoyed, and she knew she had no right to be. She’d sure made it sound like she wanted him to stop being Cat Noir right then. It hadn’t occurred to her even for a second—at the time—that he actually would.

But if he really wasn’t transforming anymore, then she had no way at all to get in touch with him. No way to apologize for being so harsh toward him. And it absolutely ate her up that that last words she might ever get to say to her friend had been, “Don’t become someone I’ll have to take down.”

She pounded her head on her desk and groaned, “I’m the worst person ever.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Tikki said, but it sounded more like a platitude than honest comfort. Which meant there was no comfort to offer. Marinette had screwed up big time, there was no way to fix it, and they both knew it.

Marinette went over to flop onto her chaise. “It’s been weird without any supervillains to fight.” Weird and pointless to keep carrying around her Miraculous and Tikki as if a supervillain might need vanquishing at any moment when the threat was obviously gone. She felt like a soldier who came back home from war and kept carrying their rifle around in everyday life. It . . . didn’t fit. She wasn’t Ladybug when she was just wearing the suit. She was Ladybug when she was saving people and fighting evil. And when there were no people to save and no evil to fight, she was just regular Marinette in a silly costume.

She sat up and sighed. “Tikki, is it . . . is it time?”

Her small, red friend hung in the air near her head. “What do you think, Marinette?”

“I think . . .” She sighed again. “I think it’s time.”

Tikki pressed herself against Marinette’s cheek. “You know I couldn’t ever ask for a better Ladybug.”

Marinette hugged her, feeling herself start to cry. “I’ll miss you, Tikki. I’ll miss you so much.”

“Me too, Marinette.”

Marinette hesitated to remove her Miraculous. “What should we do about Cat Noir?”

Tikki shrugged. “If he really has stopped being Cat Noir, then he might have hidden his Miraculous somewhere. Without any idea where, it would be really hard to find it ourselves.”

“Do you think I should . . . try harder?”

“Do you think there is a real chance he’ll become a supervillain if he keeps it?”

“No. Especially not if he really has stopped using it already.” She’d been way, way too harsh on him. If only she could take it back. But it didn’t look like that was possible now.

“Then why not trust him with it?” Tikki suggested.

Marinette nodded. She didn’t have a whole lot of choice, but she would have tried if she’d thought it was necessary. If someone like Lila had had one, Marinette would have scoured the earth until she found it and took it back. But she had no reason to think Cat Noir would ever misuse it, so she decided to let it go.

She brought her fingers to her ears. “Goodbye, then, Tikki.” She gave her friend one last smile.

“Marinette,” Tikki said, and for a second, it looked like she would say something. But then she appeared to change her mind and only smiled back. “Goodbye.”

Marinette removed her Miraculous, and then Tikki was gone. Standing, Marinette found the Miracle Box and placed the Ladybug Miraculous inside. It was now nearly a complete set. So much power entrusted to her. She mentally promised Master Fu and all the other Guardians that had come before her that she’d do her absolute best to be a good Guardian for these Miraculouses. Then she found the safest place she could and tucked the box away.


	4. Chapter 4

The downfall of Hawk Moth (not Adrien’s favorite pun he’d ever come up with) and the disappearance of Ladybug and Cat Noir wasn’t something anyone noticed right away. No one except the people themselves. For the first week or so, everything was pretty normal. But then the morning show hosts started to mention how nice the break from akumas was, and people on social media started to ask if anyone had seen the superheroes lately. By the next week, news and speculation was all anyone talked about. But since there wasn’t actually any news of substance, it was all speculation. Alya ran some theories of her own on the Ladyblog—everything from the heroes and villain getting trapped in the ancient past to being shrunk to microscopic size—all based on the idea that the disappearance had been caused by some supervillain or other. But one of her less wild—and therefore less popular—theories was closer to the truth: that they’d all just decided to give up and go back to normal, boring lives. Adrien didn’t actually have any idea what Ladybug had done, but she’d disappeared from the public eye at the same time Cat Noir had, so he had to assume she’d really given her Miraculous back to Master Fu and gone back to being . . . whoever she really was under the mask.

A person he would never know.

His chest had been so tight for the past three weeks that he’d begun to think the tightness would never go away. If love was a good thing, how could it hurt this much?

His father was home and doing well. Gabriel was as determined as Adrien had ever seen him, and he wasn’t going to let a little thing like being paralyzed from the waist down stop him from going straight back to work. Now that he didn’t have his little side project to divide his time, Gabriel was actually even more focused than ever on his designing and other company matters.

But he took time out for one new thing now. Every time Adrien ate a meal at home, his father was right there, eating with him.

It didn’t make the pain of losing Ladybug go away, but it helped. A lot. It seemed that Adrien really hadn’t given her up for nothing. And maybe this was a sign that Gabriel really did mean to hold up his end of their bargain.

“My class has a field trip to the Louvre today, Father,” Adrien told him at breakfast. “Is it all right if I go?”

Gabriel was reading something on his tablet. “Hmm? I don’t suppose you could get into too much trouble at a museum. You may go.”

Adrien resisted the urge to remind Gabriel of all the times Hawk Moth had caused trouble at the Louvre which Cat Noir had been the one to fix. It didn’t seem fair that Gabriel would pretend Adrien was the one who might cause trouble. But dwelling on the past like that wouldn’t do any good, and they needed to move forward, so he just said, “Thank you, Father.”

Standing at Gabriel’s elbow, Nathalie made a note of it in her schedule. “If it looks like your class will return late for any reason, call me and I’ll have you picked up. You’ve got a photoshoot right after school that you can’t miss.”

“I will,” Adrien agreed.

Nathalie was doing much better. Whatever harm the damaged Miraculous had done to her, it didn’t seem to have been permanent. At least he’d gotten the thing away from her before it did whatever it had done to his mother. Nathalie was far from a surrogate mother to him, but she did take care of him and had done so for a long time. He didn’t want to see anything bad happen to her.

He couldn’t tell if Gabriel had told her about Adrien being Cat Noir. Nathalie hadn’t said anything to give him a clue one way or the other.

Adrien didn’t pay a lot of attention to what was happening on his way to school or on the bus trip to the Louvre. He greeted his friends and pretended not to be completely heartbroken the best that he could. When they got to the Louvre, he enjoyed looking at the art, not paying much attention to their teacher or the guide—who were mostly saying things about the art which Adrien already knew anyway—and then suddenly the group was breaking up even though they were still in the middle of a hall full of paintings.

“What’s going on?” he asked Nino.

“You weren’t listening, were you?” asked Alya.

“Uh . . . not really,” Adrien admitted.

“Free time, dude,” said Nino. “Well, we still have to stay in the museum and take in the culture and stuff, but we get to go off on our own.”

Adrien looked around and saw that people had mostly split off into pairs or small groups. “Oh. So, what do you guys want to look at?”

Alya looped her arm through Nino’s and gave him a sly look. “Nino and I want to go check some stuff out in the Greek wing by ourselves, if that’s okay.”

Nino looked at her. “We do?”

She elbowed him. “Yes. We do.”

“Oh, right. Right. We do.”

Adrien shook his head and chuckled. “If you guys want time alone, you can just say so.” Honestly, if they were going to be coupley, Adrien would probably have an easier time if they did it away from him. It normally didn’t bother him in the slightest, but seeing happy couples was never very fun for someone with a broken heart.

Alya immediately started dragging Nino away. “Great. See you guys at lunch.”

For a moment, Adrien was afraid they’d left him completely alone and he’d end up spending the day by himself—and then he noticed that Marinette was still here and instantly felt a little better. “Guess it’s just you and me, Marinette. If that’s okay.”

“Yeah! Just the two of us! Yay . . .” She gave him a strange, forced smile, then shot an annoyed glare in Alya’s direction, and then smiled at Adrien again.

“Is something wrong?”

“No! No, nothing’s wrong! You’re great! I mean everything’s great!” She stopped and took a few deep breaths. Then whatever was flustering her seemed to go away, because she stood straight and looked him in the eyes. “Can we . . . can we talk somewhere?”

Adrien had already seen everything in the Louvre multiple times, so he shrugged. “Sure.” They found a smaller room that had a bench and no other people in it. “Did you want to talk about something in particular?”

She didn’t say anything right away, but she made a lot of expressions and it seemed like she was trying to figure out which words to use. “Adrien, is . . . is there something bothering you?”

He swallowed. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s just, I—I know your dad got hurt, and that’s terrible, and I don’t mean to say that it’s not enough to be sad about, but . . . well, you look like something’s bothering you, and it seems like it might be more than just your dad.”

And here he thought he’d been doing an okay job hiding it. “To be honest, yeah, something is. But you don’t need to worry about it, Marinette. It’s not anything that can be fixed, so I don’t want to bother anyone with it. I’m sorry for worrying you.”

“You’re not bothering me!” She fiddled with her hands. “I—I don’t want to pry, and you don’t have to tell me, but . . . is it . . . does it have anything to do with that girl you said you love?”

The bottom fell out of his stomach. He swallowed again, trying to make his throat remember how to work. “Actually . . . yeah. It does.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding sad herself now for some reason. “If you . . . want to talk about it . . . I mean, we’re friends, right? So, if you need someone to talk to, I want to help.”

Adrien heaved a sigh. He didn’t know what talking about it would do to help, but with Plagg gone, he’d really felt the lack of someone to confide in. It wasn’t like he had to tell Marinette the whole truth. “I . . . think she hates me now. Or at least doesn’t like me.”

“What?” Marinette’s eyes were wide. “How could she hate you? You’re perfect! I mean, well, not actually perfect of course, because no one’s actually perfect, but you’re nearly perfect. No, wait, I mean—”

He laughed. “Thanks, Marinette.” It was sweet how she tried to cheer him up, and funny how she was so bad at figuring out how to give compliments sometimes. “It was my fault, though. Or at least not hers. It was a misunderstanding.”

“Oh. Then, can’t you just talk to her and clear it up?”

There was no way to clear it up without coming clean, and he couldn’t do that without breaking his deal with his father. Even if he had any way of actually contacting her. “No. She . . . well, she’s gone.”

Marinette gaped. “She died?”

“No! No, not like that. Just . . . things have changed, and we don’t have any reason to see each other anymore, and I don’t have any of her contact info.”

Marinette got really quiet and looked at her shoes. “Oh. I’m sorry. It hurts to lose someone you care about, especially over a misunderstanding you can’t clear up.”

“You sound like it’s happened to you, too.”

“Yeah. He was a really good friend, and I think I kind of ruined everything. I was really judgmental and said some mean things.”

Adrien put a hand on her shoulder. “You _can_ be a little too quick to judge people sometimes.” She flinched, so he continued quickly. “But you always mean well, and you always try to make it right if you can.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Except this time I _can’t_ make it right.”

Which was the whole problem. And Adrien couldn’t help her with it because he couldn’t figure out how to fix the exact same problem of his own. His hands fell into his lap. Adrien and Marinette sat there, both staring at their hands, until Marinette sucked in a huge breath, pushed her shoulders back, and turned to him.

“Adrien, I have something to tell you.”

It looked important, so he turned to face her. “Okay.”

“I don’t know if saying this when you’re sad about the girl you love leaving makes it the best time or the worst time, but if something happened tomorrow and I never saw you again, I’d regret it forever if I never told you this.”

The look in Marinette’s eyes was really intent, but Adrien was at a complete loss for what she could possibly need to tell him that was so serious. “Tell me what, Marinette?” he prompted when she didn’t speak for a few seconds.

“I—Adrien, I—I like you!”

He smiled. “I like you, too, Marinette. I’m really glad to have you as a friend.”

“No! I—” She made a frustrated sound, screwed up her face, and knocked her fists against her head. Then looked at him with such intensity that he leaned away from her. “I’m in love with you!”

Adrien stared at her in shock. Had his friend Marinette really just confessed her love to him? She must have, since he couldn’t think of any reason his brain would have made it up.

Suddenly, she shrunk away from him, curling up on the bench and tapping her fingertips together. “I have for a long time. Since not long after we met,” she said to her fingers instead of him.

He kept working it through, trying to fit this new information into his view of reality. His friend Marinette was in love with him . . . and had been for nearly the whole time they’d known each other.

Just like his dad had been Hawk Moth for the whole time Adrien had been Cat Noir. And Nathalie had been Mayura.

Did Adrien really know anyone at all? Were they all totally different than he thought? Was his bodyguard a Russian spy? Was Chloe his long-lost twin sister? Was Nino a time-traveler from ancient Egypt?

Adrien didn’t realize he was still staring at Marinette with an expression of complete shock until she got up, murmured, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything,” and started walking away.

He leapt up and grabbed her wrist. “Marinette, wait!”

She tried to pull away, but not very hard. “No, it’s okay, you don’t have to say anything. I get it.”

“No, you don’t. I’m surprised; that’s all. I didn’t have any idea you felt that way.”

“How could you? It’s not like I was being totally obvious about it or that everyone else in class knows or anything like that, heh-heh.”

He tugged her gently back toward the bench. “Would you sit with me?” There was no one else in the room, so they had at least a small amount of privacy, though it was still a public museum.

She quietly sat beside him on the bench. “You don’t have to say anything, Adrien. I know you don’t like me that way.”

“Well . . . no,” he said honestly. “But . . . that doesn’t mean I couldn’t.”

The look she turned on him surprised him because it seemed to be fear. But then he realized it was fear of hope.

It wouldn’t be nice to get her hopes up, only to reject her later. But the truth was: He knew Ladybug was forever out of his reach, and he didn’t know how much longer he could bear the pain of losing her so spectacularly. Maybe focusing on another girl for a while would help him get his mind off Ladybug.

Put that way, it sounded awful, like he was only using Marinette. But he did want to try to move on, and maybe it would be easier to move toward something instead of away from something. He knew Marinette wasn’t his only option. He knew Kagami was interested in him, not that he had any idea why. He didn’t have to choose Marinette just because she was the first one to confess to him after he lost Ladybug. But he liked Marinette. She was a genuinely good person, and he didn’t want to hurt her. If he rejected her now, not only would he hurt his good friend, he’d probably lose any chance he had of exploring a relationship with her. Because he knew that _she_ had other options, too.

Maybe things wouldn’t work out. At their age, they probably wouldn’t. But this felt like one of those moments in life where you had to either grab the opportunity with both hands or lose it forever.

Adrien reached for Marinette’s hand and held it in both of his. “Marinette, would you go out with me?”


	5. Chapter 5

Propped up on her elbows in bed, Marinette gazed at her husband’s sleeping face and sighed with pleasure. Looking at him never got old, and she couldn’t imagine that it ever would. He was perfect, beautiful, amazing, and—somehow—all hers. With a feather-light touch, she trailed the tip of her finger down the bridge of his nose, admiring the lines and curves. When she got to the tip of his nose, she kissed it.

His lovely, green eyes blinked open, and he smiled at her. “Good morning, Marinette.”

“Good morning, Adrien.”

“What are you doing?”

“Watching you sleep. But, uh . . . not in a creepy way.”

He chuckled and sat up. “As long as it’s not in a creepy way.” He kissed her before looking for his phone on the bedside table. “Ten minutes before my alarm. You didn’t want to let me sleep?”

“Sorry. Couldn’t help it. You’re too touchable.”

His features shifted into a sly grin. “I’m not the only one.”

“Ah! What are you doing? Stop! Stop!” she cried between laughter and gasps as he pounced on her.

“If you insist.” He stopped and pulled away.

She grabbed his arm. “I may have . . . spoken too hastily. I mean, that is, you don’t _have_ to stop. Necessarily.”

He made a show of considering her words. “Well, we do have”—he checked his phone—“nine minutes before we have to get up.”

Marinette pouted. “Is that all?”

“It is Tuesday. I’m sure I have a full schedule. As much as I’d like to stay in bed all morning, duty calls.”

She sighed dejectedly. “You’re right.” Then she perked up. “But not for another nine minutes.”

And so they stayed in bed, cuddling and kissing, until Adrien’s alarm went off. He placed one last kiss on her forehead and said, “I love you,” before rolling out of bed and turning off the alarm.

Marinette sighed happily and got up to face the day.

Half an hour later, they were down in the dining room, having breakfast. Even after five years of marriage, Marinette still wasn’t used to how unnecessarily large every room in the Agreste mansion was. Their bedroom, which had been ridiculous when Adrien was a kid, was still too big even for a couple. The dining table had more empty seats than occupied ones, and it would take way more than Marinette’s planned two children to fill it out. She did appreciate the large kitchen, though. Even though she hadn’t followed her parents into the baking profession, she still enjoyed doing it, and it was nice to have the space.

“Adrien, don’t forget about our meeting in an hour to go over the plan for next Saturday’s fashion show,” Gabriel said from the other end of the table.

“I remember, Father,” Adrien answered.

Marinette took a croissant from the platter in front of her and inhaled the fresh scent. Although she hadn’t understood why Adrien had been so determined not to get their own place but to live here with his father (he had implied it had something to do with Gabriel’s disability, but Gabriel had plenty of people on his payroll to help with any needs he had in that regard), it had obviously been important to him, so Marinette had agreed. Her one condition had been that she not lose out on getting her parents’ bread or pastries every day, so each morning, Adrien’s bodyguard had to make a trip to the bakery before breakfast.

Just as she had a mouth full of flaky, buttery croissant, Gabriel asked her, “How are the designs for the Kitty Section costumes coming, Marinette? Will they be ready in time for the broadcast?”

Marinette fought to swallow the bread, took a big gulp of milk to help it down, and almost choked. She coughed, Adrien helpfully patting her back, and gave Gabriel a thumb’s up. “Yep. We’re good to go, Boss.”

When he’d become her father-in-law, Gabriel had told Marinette she could call him ‘Father’, but that just sounded way too weird for her, especially since he’d been her employer for two years prior to the wedding. But Adrien really didn’t seem to like when she called his father ‘Mr. Agreste’ now that they were family, so Marinette compromised with ‘Boss’, and everyone seemed to be okay with that.

Standing just behind and beside Gabriel, Nathalie said, “Adrien, there’s been a slight change to your schedule. The photoshoot has been pushed back half an hour.”

“So I actually get a lunch break.” He smiled at Marinette. “Care to join me?”

Before Marinette could answer, Gabriel did it for her. “Marinette has fittings scheduled from ten to three, Adrien. She won’t have time for unnecessary excursions.”

“Sorry,” Marinette mouthed to her husband. She would be annoyed at the way Gabriel worked them both like a slavedriver sometimes, if she didn’t enjoy her work so much. Even something as simple as a fitting was exciting when it involved creating original, custom outfits for rock stars.

Adrien leaned closer and whispered to her, “I’ll swing by and see if we can grab some craft service, then.”

Once she’d finished every crumb on her plate, Marinette had to admit it was time for work. “I’ve got some things to do in my office before the fittings,” she said, getting up from the table. “Have a good day, everyone.”

She and Adrien had separate offices on the second floor, down the hall from their bedroom. They’d had the TV in the bedroom on while they were getting ready for the day, and neither of them had remembered to turn it off before they left. As Marinette passed the partially-open door, the sound of the TV interrupted her thoughts.

“—unclear if the monster is akuma-related or—”

Marinette missed the next few words under the sound of her own gasp. She flew into the room and plunked herself down in front of the TV.

The screen showed an aerial view of the base of the Eiffel Tower, where a white, glowing portal had opened right between two of the tower’s legs. People were running in panic away from it—and from the plant-like, viney monster undulating outward from it.

“What the heck is that?!” Marinette cried.

Nadja Chamak’s voice spoke over the video. “For those of you just joining us, some kind of plant monster has appeared in front of the Eiffle Tower. It came through an energy portal which appeared only minutes ago. So far, the monster has not hurt anyone, but citizens are advised to get as far away from the Eiffle Tower as possible until the potential threat has been neutralized. The police have engaged the monster, and the military are on their way, but so far, no weapons have had much effect on the monster. I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say: Wherever Ladybug and Cat Noir disappeared to fourteen years ago, now would be a great time for them to come back.”

Marinette didn’t have to think about whether Nadja Chamak was correct. The evidence was right there on the screen. Whatever that monster is, it obviously wasn’t something the regular law enforcement was meant to handle. This was a job for superheroes.

She ran to her office and closed and locked the door behind her. Then she unlocked a hidden safe and withdrew the Miracle Box. She took a deep breath, sparing only two seconds to soak in the import of the moment before opening the lid. For a fraction of a second, she considered if one of the other Miraculouses might be better. She hadn’t been given a choice in which one to take the first time, and now she could choose between almost any of them. But it wasn’t really a choice. It could only be the Ladybug Miraculous for her.

As soon as she picked up the earrings, Tikki flew out of them, saw who she was, and dove in for a hug. “Marinette! It’s so good to see you! You’ve grown up!”

Marinette hugged her friend back. “I’m so happy to see you, Tikki.”

“How long has it been?” Tikki asked.

“Fourteen years. We don’t have time to catch up just now, though.”

“Is there a supervillain?”

“I’m not sure what it is. Some kind of monster.” Marinette and Tikki both could see that the Butterfly Miraculous was still in the Miracle Box, just where she’d left it. For good measure, she opened all the other compartments to check, but every single Miraculous that should have been there was. “Maybe it’s caused by a Miraculous from a different set?”

Tikki shrugged. “Once we get closer, I should be able to get some idea.”

“Then we’d better get over there. Tikki, spots on!” Man, that felt good to say. Almost as good as the rush of transformation and the feel of her suit stretched across her skin. There was a mirror in her office, and she caught enough of a glance at herself to see that the suit wasn’t quite how she remembered it. It was mostly the same, but there were a few decorative black lines, and the ribbons and pigtails were gone. Now, her hair was in a single, long ponytail held by a tight band, similar to how she kept it when she was working. The yo-yo was just the same as she remembered, though it felt slightly smaller in her hand.

Before leaving, she closed the Miracle Box and returned it to the safe. She knew where all the security cameras inside and outside the mansion were, and it was easy to avoid them as she launched herself out of her office window and swung across the city toward the Eiffle Tower.

#

Adrien worked on finishing his breakfast and wondered who the photographer for his photoshoot today would be. Just as he was about to ask Nathalie to tell him, her eyes widened in surprise at something on her tablet.

“Mr. Agreste, look.” She made a few quick taps, then held the tablet in front of Gabriel’s face.

From all the way at the other end of the table, Adrien couldn’t make out much of what came from the tablet’s small speakers, but the sudden interest on his father’s face was enough to make him jump up and run to look over Gabriel’s shoulder.

The tablet showed a news broadcast of the type that looked all too familiar. A big, green monster was wandering around, tossing cars out of its way and causing people to flee. Before he realized what he was doing, Adrien shot a suspiscious look at Gabriel.

Unfortunately, Gabriel caught it. “No, son, I didn’t have anything to do with this.”

Adrien returned his gaze to the tablet screen. “Of course not, Father. How could you?” He peeked sidelong at Nathalie, watching for her reaction. In all the years since everything had ended, he’d never been able to tell how much she knew about him and what he knew.

But there was enough understanding in the way she met his eyes that he finally had his answer. Gabriel must have told her everything.

Adrien wanted to run upstairs, find his Miraculous, and go after the monster, but it would be awfully suspicious if he left now. “This looks bad,” he said, trying to figure out the right excuse to leave. He’d worked hard to make sure Gabriel never found out he still had his Miraculous—that it was still right here under the former Hawk Moth’s nose.

Work which had apparently been for nothing. “Yes,” Gabriel agreed. “It might even be a job for a superhero.”

“Father?” Adrien asked uncertainly.

Gabriel reached to give his arm a reassuring squeeze. “Be safe, Adrien.”

Nathalie echoed the sentiment with a small, concerned smile of her own.

As much as the more suspicious part of Adrien worried to know that they knew he still had his Miraculous, another part of him felt an immense lightness that he wouldn’t have to work to hide it from them. He’d only have to hide it from Marinette, his bodyguard, and whoever else came and went through the mansion.

Adrien nodded once, then sprinted upstairs to his office. His heart raced as he opened his safe and dug into the back. This was it. Finally. _Finally_. His hand closed around the Miraculous box, and he yanked it open and shoved on the ring.

Plagg popped into the air beside him. “Adrien? Adrien! Whoa, what happened to you?”

Adrien beamed at his old friend. “Hi again, Plagg.”

Flying circles around him, Plagg said, “You’re so tall.” He poked Adrien’s shoulder. “What’s with these muscles?”

“I grew up, Plagg.” Adrien rubbed his shoulder self-consciously. “And it’s part of my job to work out. Don’t make it sound like I’m some body-builder. I’m just not a kid anymore.”

“You’re not?”

“It’s been fourteen years, Plagg.”

“Is that all? You humans sure get old quickly. Hey, do you have any cheese?”

“Maybe later. We’ve got something to do first.”

“Aw, already?” Plagg whined.

Adrien laughed, joy and excitement bubbling up inside him. “Plagg, claws out!”


	6. Chapter 6

Cat Noir let out loud whoops of sheer happiness as he pole-vaulted across Paris. He was _back_. It felt like some huge chunk of his soul had been cut off and stored in a box for half of his life, and he was finally whole again. The thrill of bounding through the air, the thrum of anticipation from launching himself headlong at danger; how had he lived all these years without it? And the speed. The _speed_. Before he knew it, the Eiffel Tower was in front of him. An elephant-sized monster lumbered around at the base of it.

He landed a good hundred yards away to see what he could see. If this monster wasn’t someone who’d been akumatized, the minion/creation of someone who’d been akumatized, or a sentimonster, then what was it? Those were the only types of monsters Cat Noir had faced. It didn’t look like he’d get any answers by standing around. With his stick in one hand, he sprinted at the monster.

A red shape dropped down beside him and instantly matched his stride. He stumbled and nearly landed flat on his face but managed to catch himself and keep running. “Ladybug?”

“Who did you expect, Cat Noir?” she asked with a smile.

“I—I—” Maybe he should have expected her, but he hadn’t. He’d assumed that she’d given her Miraculous to Master Fu. Which didn’t mean that Master Fu couldn’t have given it back to her when the monster showed up, but he could have just as easily given it to someone else.

Someone else . . .

As they ran, he cast a glance across her body. The suit was nearly the same, but the body that filled it out wasn’t the wispy girl he remembered. She was still very slender, but he was sure those curves hadn’t been quite so pronounced before.

He forced his gaze to her face. Her eyes were the same gorgeous blue. Her hair was longer but still the same color, and the pigtails had switched to a ponytail. But the rest? Maybe it was her? So much time had passed, and it was so hard to tell anything through the mask.

“Ladybug?” he finally asked. “Is it really you?

“We’ll talk later, Kitty Cat. First we have to take this monster out before it hurts anyone.”

That sure sounded like his Ladybug.

They reached a lone police squad car, which Officer Roger was using as cover as he plinked uselessly at the plant monster with his pistol.

“Good morning, Officer,” Cat Noir said, making the policeman jump. “_Vine_ weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

“Cat Noir?” Roger said in disbelief, then looked to where Ladybug crouched on his other side. “Ladybug?”

“What can you tell us about the monster?” Ladybug asked.

To his credit, it didn’t take Roger long to get past his surprise. “My bullets aren’t doing anything to it, Ladybug. The military’s on their way, but they’re still five minutes out.”

“Does it have any obvious weak spots?” she asked.

Roger shook his head. “It’s a plant, Ladybug. At least, I think it is. All I can see are leaves and vines.”

“All right. Thanks, Officer Roger. We’ll take it from here. You get to safety.”

Roger didn’t argue but ran away as fast as a clumsy, overweight, middle-aged man could, keeping the squad car and the superheroes between himself and the monster.

Cat Noir crouched with Ladybug behind the car and peered over it at the plant monster, which was writhing and flailing around under the Eiffel Tower. “Got a plan, Ladybug?”

“I’m trying, but I’m a little rusty, and this isn’t like anything we’ve ever faced.”

“So you’re sure it’s not the work of the Butterfly Miraculous.” He knew it wasn’t Hawk Moth, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t someone else using the same power.

But she said, “Positive,” without any hesitation. He didn’t know what she’d done with the Butterfly Miraculous after he’d given it to her, but if she was sure, that was all he needed to know. “It’s not the Peacock Miraculous either,” she added. “It’s not _any_ Miraculous that I know of.”

“So what do we do? Just a straight attack?”

“Until we know if it has any weaknesses, I don’t think we can do anything else.”

“Makes sense to me.” Cat Noir bounded over the squad car and launched himself at the monster.

They closed the distance in no time, but the monster saw it coming (even though Cat Noir couldn’t find any eyes on the thing). The side with more smaller vines coming out of it turned toward them, so . . . that side was probably its face? The small vines thrashed around in a way that almost had a pattern as two huge vines the size of pythons struck out at Cat Noir and his partner. The two heroes avoided the vines easily, then danced around the dozen other vines that twisted through the air and tried to grab at them.

Intellectually, Cat Noir knew he was probably in mortal peril and should have been at least a little scared. He should have taken the whole thing more seriously and gotten to the part where he actually tried to beat the thing faster. But he kind of forgot about doing any of that because he was having so much fun. Dodging the tentacley vines as they thrashed at him, beating them off with his stick and trying to work his way toward the main body of the monster—without any real thought as to what he’d do when he got there—pushed his athleticism miles past anything he could achieve as plain old Adrien Agreste. If the endorphins from a good run made him feel refreshed and energized, this kind of workout made him feel like he was awake and alive for the first time in years.

“Quit dawdling, Cat Noir!” Ladybug shouted at him.

He turned his head to see her fighting off the vines with an expression of irritation on her face. Apparently this was not quite as much fun for her. What was it he was intending to do to this monster?

Oh, right. “Cataclysm!”

Black magic engulfed his hand, and he pressed it against the next vine that came at him. The magic absorbed into the green flesh of the vine monster, and then—

And then . . .

Nothing happened.

Cat Noir was so stunned by his own complete impotence that he didn’t block the next vine that swung at him and got knocked high into the air. He landed on the roof of the squad car so hard it would have shattered his spine if he’d been untransformed.

_Well, that was embarrassing._

Ladybug broke away from the monster, landed daintily on the car roof, and offered him a hand up. “What went wrong? Did you miss it?”

_And hit what instead?_ he wanted to ask her. _It was all vines in there._ But he didn’t want to sound petulant, so he shook his head. “I hit it. It just didn’t do anything.”

A scraping sound like a huge ball of snakes slithering across concrete drew their attention back to the monster. Somehow, in the few seconds they’d been talking, it had moved at least eighty yards from where it had been. It wasn’t moving directly past them, but it was heading in the direction they’d come in from, at a slight angle. Past it, they could see a figure running, though not running fast enough to outpace the undulating mass of leaves and vines.

“Officer Roger!” Ladybug cried. The policeman was still working on escaping but had come to the attention of the monster, probably because he was the only person other than Ladybug and Cat Noir still in the vicinity. Ladybug spun her yo-yo into the air and shouted, “Lucky Charm!”

Something small landed in her hand, but Cat Noir couldn’t quite make out what it was. When he moved closer for a better look, she shoved it behind her back, hiding it from him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing!”

“It’s something created by magic to help us right when we need it. Of course it’s not nothing.”

“It’s nothing you need to see.”

He raised an eyebrow, not that she could see that through his mask. “Why? Is it embarrassing?” He could think of a few types of objects which might be embarrassing to unwittingly conjure, but picturing any of them in Ladybug’s hands was a disturbingly exciting thought, so he clenched his teeth and held his tongue. Besides, if he ever even breathed the words ‘Get Lucky Charm’, she would probably tie him up with her yo-yo and leave him dangling from the Eiffel Tower for a week. He cleared his throat. “You know what, let’s just stop that monster before it kills Officer Roger.”

“Right.” She tucked the small object somewhere and ran with him toward the monster. When they reached it, Roger was nowhere to be seen. “Did he get away?” Ladybug asked.

Cat Noir started beating at the monster’s vines with his stick. “I didn’t see. Do you know what to do with the Lucky Charm?”

As she wrestled with the vines, Ladybug said, “Yes, but I don’t think it’s going to help us right now.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

One of the lower vines rose off the pavement and came at Cat Noir. As he dodged around it, he caught a glimpse of something blue under the monster. “Uh, Ladybug. I think I found Officer Roger.” When she looked at him, he pointed down.

“Focus on the vines on top of him!” she shouted. “If you can get them to lift up, I can pull him out!”

“Any ideas how to do that?” Cat Noir asked. He was hitting one of the vines with his stick, but it didn’t seem to even feel it. “I’ve already used my Cataclysm!”

Black magic surged around his hand—which unfortunately was still holding onto his stick. The unexpected Cataclysm turned his stick to crumbly black particles before he could do anything to stop it.

“Ladybug!” he cried in excitement. “Did you see that!”

She was busy pulling at one of the vines covering Roger. “Yeah! Try it again!”

“Cataclysm!” Cat Noir shouted. The black magic of destruction surged to life. He pressed his hand against the monster, catching a part of a vine closer to the main body than before. It still didn’t do much, but he did feel a shudder from the monster, as if he’d at least caused it pain. So, he wasn’t completely ineffectual. “I’m going in!” he called out, then wriggled his way through the vines like a jungle explorer. The closer he got, the tighter the vines pressed around him. But he kept shouting, “Cataclysm!” and each time he touched the monster with his special ability, it shuddered in pain. When he couldn’t get in any farther and was reaching as far as he could into the tangle of vines, his next Cataclysm not only made the monster shudder but also let out an angry hiss.

“Got him!” Ladybug shouted.

Cat Noir gave the monster a few more Cataclysms for good measure, then squirmed away and out of the monster’s mass before it could get a grip on him. He helped Ladybug get Roger to safety, but when they tried to go after the monster again, they didn’t see it. Cat Noir scoured the area until he saw a few trailing vines disappearing down a man hole. “There!”

“The sewer?” Ladybug said in disbelief. “How did it even fit?”

The question was on his mind, too, but it didn’t really matter. They chased the monster to the man hole, but when they reached the sewer underneath, they couldn’t find it.

Cat Noir pounded a frustrated fist against the wall of the sewer. “It got away.”

When they reached the street again, Ladybug tossed the Lucky Charm into the air (he still couldn’t tell what it was) and shouted, “Miraculous Ladybug!” The strange and familiar swirl of ladybug magic whooshed around them, righting the cars that the monster had tossed over and fixing the other visible damage to the area. But they hadn’t actually beat the monster and the monster wasn’t a typical villain, so they weren’t sure how thorough the fixing would be.

They returned to the street corner where they’d left Officer Roger to find him being tended to by some strangers.

“How do you feel?” Ladybug asked him.

Roger patted himself. “All right, I think.”

“You should get to a hospital and have them check you out anyway,” she advised.

One of the people in the small crowd came forward. “Ladybug? Cat Noir? You’re really back?”

The two heroes looked up to see that almost everyone had their phones out and were taking photos and videos of them. Cat Noir waved and gave them one of his most winning smiles. “Hello, Paris! We’re back!”

And even though the crowd wasn’t made up of reporters, the questions came fast and hot.

“Why did you leave?”

“What happened to you?”

“Did you defeat Hawk Moth?”

“Were you trapped in the past?”

And so on.

Ladybug stepped forward, and the crowd quieted. She looked into the nearest person’s phone camera and said. “Cat Noir and I are fine. Nothing bad happened to us. We went away because Hawk Moth was defeated, so we weren’t needed anymore. But as you’ve all seen, there’s a new threat now, and we’re here to stop it. Because that’s what we do. We protect Paris and its citizens from any supervillain that dares to threaten them.”

Most of the people in the crowd cheered. One woman asked, “Are you really the same Ladybug and Cat Noir as before?”

Cat Noir stepped up to his lady’s side. He’d seen enough during the fight to be sure of his answer. “We are. So don’t worry. We’re on the job.”


	7. Chapter 7

The magical ladybugs had restored Cat Noir’s stick, so as soon as Ladybug made their excuses and swung away, he was right behind her. They swung and bounded across the city for a few minutes until Ladybug found a suitable rooftop.

As soon as they both landed, Cat Noir scooped her into a hug, lifting her off her feet, and laughed with excitement. “Ladybug, it’s so good to see you!”

She laughed with him and returned the hug, though she let go a lot sooner than he wanted to. “It’s good to see you too, Cat Noir. But would you mind putting me down?”

He set her on her feet but didn’t totally let go of her yet. As soon as he looked into her eyes, the lightness and joy inside him became something far more intense, and he hugged her again, crushing her into his chest and burying his face in her shoulder. “I thought I’d never see you again,” he murmured.

For a few seconds, she was frozen, then she patted him gently on the back. “Me too, Kitty.”

He got a hold of himself and stepped away. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Cat Noir, we need to talk.”

He couldn’t tell if that was a good ‘we need to talk’ or a bad one. To put off finding out, he looked at his ring. All the pads of the paw were still there. He raised his hand to show her. “My ring’s not blinking.” He checked her ears. “And neither are your earrings.”

Ladybug nodded. “And you were able to use your Cataclysm multiple times without resting.”

Yeah, that had been weird. Very, very cool, but weird. “Why?”

“Remember when we met Bunnyx from the future? How she could use her time travel ability over and over?”

Now that she mentioned it, he did. “Riiight. She said it was because she was an adult.”

Ladybug held her hands out in a ‘there you have it’ gesture. “And we’re adults now.”

“So we can use our abilities as many times as we want without having to transform back, and we won’t have the countdown until we’re forced to transform. That’ll be really convenient.”

Suddenly, she looked away with a thoughtful frown.

“What is it, Milady?”

“Bunnyx said she was from the future when we were all adults, but she didn’t say exactly how far. I don’t remember her looking all that old, do you?”

“No. What’s the problem?”

“It’s not a problem. I’m just wondering . . . Was she from our present, our future, or an alternate future entirely than the one that we’re living in?”

Cat Noir shrugged. “I’m not the cat to ask about that sort of thing. I’m not a quantum physicist, just a—”

She put her hand over his mouth. “Don’t say anything about your real life.”

He took her wrist and moved her hand down. “Just a humble crimefighter, is what I was going to say. But why can’t I tell you, Ladybug? After Hawk Moth . . .” Mentioning that conversation brought it all back afresh: the guilt, the worry, the crushing heartbreak. “You said we could share our identities, but I guess that was a contingent offer.”

Ladybug sat down on the roof and leaned against a chimney. When she patted the spot beside her, he sat next to her.

“Cat Noir, I—”

“You don’t have to say it. In all my excitement, I forgot how we left things. But I remember now; you don’t need to remind me. I get that I screwed up. I get that you’re angry at me. If you . . . If you don’t want to be partners this time, if you want to work separately, I’ll understand. I know keeping the Miraculous was—”

“Would you let me talk, Kitty? I’m trying to apologize.”

Cat Noir looked at her in surprise and went very still. He held his breath. If he could have stopped his heart so he wouldn’t hear it drumming in his ears, he’d have done that, too.

Ladybug watched her hands in her lap. “I was too harsh. I overreacted. I’m sorry. I tried to apologize right afterward, but you never returned any of my messages.”

“You left messages?”

She held up her yo-yo.

He took his stick and opened it to see the messages. The small screen showed a whole bunch of missed texts and voicemails from Ladybug. He touched the screen to open the first one. “_Cat Noir, I’m sorry. I was too harsh with you—_”

Ladybug reached for his stick and closed it, cutting off the voicemail. “You don’t need to listen to them. They all say what I’m telling you now.”

Cat Noir’s head spun. Ladybug had tried to apologize all those years ago. “You’re not angry at me?”

“No, Cat.”

“You don’t . . . you don’t dislike me?”

“Of course not. I’m sure you had your reasons for wanting to keep the Miraculous. Even if it was because you couldn’t bear to part with it yet, I can understand. I felt the same way when Master Fu asked for mine. Can you forgive me?”

Cat Noir felt like crying. In relief, but also in regret. If only he hadn’t been so quick to give up his Miraculous. If only he’d gotten her messages. He wouldn’t have had to go through all of that heartbreak. “Of course, Ladybug.” He wanted to hug her again, but he’d already hugged her twice and wasn’t sure if three times would be too clingy. “Can you forgive me for keeping it?”

“I already have, Cat. A long time ago. Besides, it worked out. You were able to help me fight that monster right away.”

“Right.” He pieced some thoughts together in his mind. “Ladybug, did you keep your Miraculous, too? Or was Master Fu close enough to get it to you right away?”

“Ah . . .” Ladybug tapped her chin in thought, her expression unsure. “About that. Master Fu retired. There’s a new Guardian.”

That news didn’t really surprise Cat Noir, considering how old Master Fu had been. “Who is it?”

Ladybug looked at him, very clearly trying to decide whether or not to tell him.

“Are we doing this again, Ladybug?” he asked wearily. Although this time, he couldn’t really complain if she did want to keep secrets from him. When they’d been kids, he hadn’t kept any from her—other than his identity, which was entirely at her insistence—up until that one big secret that ruined everything. And which he was still bound to keep from her.

After a bit more consideration, she let out a breath. “No. I guess not. There wasn’t any harm in you knowing about Master Fu, so I don’t think there’s any harm in you knowing about . . . me.”

“What about you?”

“I’m the new Guardian.”

He cocked his head at her. “You are? That can happen? The Guardian being one of the Miraculous holders, I mean.”

“Master Fu had Wayzz.”

“Yeah, but . . . he didn’t actually . . .” It seemed like something that shouldn’t be allowed, but Cat Noir wasn’t exactly an expert on Guardians and their rules.

“It’s allowed, or so Master Fu implied when he gave me the Miracle Box.”

Cat Noir absorbed the new information. “So you had your Miraculous the whole time, too.”

“I didn’t wear it. I kept it in the box with the others.”

“But you had it handy. Which turned out to be a good thing.”

“I guess it did. Supervillains don’t really give much advance warning when they attack, do they?”

“Speaking of which, do you have any more of an idea what that plant monster was?”

“No. But I can ask Tikki when I get home.”

“You could . . . ask her now,” Cat Noir suggested.

Ladybug gave him a sympathetic look. “Revealing our identities to each other when we retired would have been one thing, Cat Noir. But now that we’re back, there may still be good reasons to keep them secret.”

“But there may not be.”

“We need to get a better idea of what the villain situation is this time. Revealing our identities isn’t something we can go back on if it turns out to have been a bad idea. We can’t unlearn that kind of information.”

“I think what you’re trying to say is: we can’t put the cat back in the bag,” he offered.

She smirked a little. “Yes, cats are notoriously uncooperative. So we need to be very careful. We definitely shouldn’t do it without even consulting our kwamis.”

Cat Noir was so happy to have Ladybug back and to find out she wasn’t angry at him that he didn’t bother pushing the issue any more for the time being. “So we just have to hope your kwami knows what that plant thing was and how to fight it, I guess.”

“Yeah. But I think I have some idea of at least one thing I’ll have to do.”

“What’s that?”

“So . . . about how I wouldn’t show you the Lucky Charm.”

His imagined idea of what it might have been but definitely wasn’t flashed in his mind’s eye, but he kept his face perfectly expressionless. “I do seem to recall that, yes.”

“You remember how sometimes, before, the Lucky Charm would be a replica of something from Master Fu’s room, and it meant that I needed to give another Miraculous to someone because we needed extra help.”

He vaguely remembered something about that, so he nodded.

“The Lucky Charm today was something of mine, from the room where I keep the Miracle Box. I didn’t want you to see it because . . . well, not that you have any reason to recognize any of my things, but it was a gut reaction to protect my identity.”

Did she not trust him, or would she have had that same gut reaction with anyone? He chose not to dwell on that question. “So, you think it means . . .”

“I think the Lucky Charm was telling me we’re going to need help to beat this villain. But who we’ll need help from, I have no idea. I’m hoping Tikki will be able to give me a clue.”

“That makes sense. You’re the one who knew who all our other teammates were, so I guess you’re the right one to go get them again.” He heard the sulkiness in his own tone and hated it.

“If I even give them to the same people this time.”

“Why wouldn’t you, assuming they’re still around?”

“I don’t know. I guess I probably will. But it’s something I’ll have to consider more seriously now that I’m the Guardian.”

“I guess we all have more responsibility now than we used to,” he said, thinking of his father and wondering again what it meant that Gabriel had known he’d still had the Black Cat Miraculous.

Ladybug opened her yo-yo and looked at the screen. “Nine-thirty? Shoot! I have—uh, I have something I have to get to.” She jumped to her feet. “See you later, Cat Noir.”

“Ladybug, wait!” He lunged to grab her hand before she could swing off, but then wasn’t sure what he meant to do with it, so he let it go. “I just wanted to say again how happy I am that you’re back. That _we’re_ back.”

She smiled and winked at him. “Me too, Kitty.” And then she threw out her yo-yo and swooped away.

Cat Noir watched her go, a silly grin on his face. Once she was out of sight, he started making his way home, bounding across the rooftops of Paris.

Ladybug was back and she liked him and they were a team again. They would be able to take on anything, and he was excited to do it. And once they’d defeated the plant monster, maybe there’d be something else. Or maybe the new Guardian would decide to let the heroes keep their Miraculouses, just in case they were needed again. Maybe he’d get to keep being Cat Noir and keep being with Ladybug.

The wind was cool and crisp on his face as he flung himself through the air. It helped clear his head. Which he needed, because he couldn’t go around in a dreamy daze all day. He had things to do. Responsibilities. He had to get home and talk to Plagg about the plant monster, to see if his kwami knew anything. Then there was the meeting with his father, and the photoshoot, and before that he needed to grab a bite with—

His heart lurched, his hands lost their grip on his stick mid-vault, and he tumbled thirty feet into an alley.

_Marinette._

His wife.

Who he hadn’t thought of for a single moment since laying eyes on Ladybug.

He loved his wife. He really did. It hadn’t been the sudden, intense, love-at-nearly-first-sight that he’d felt for Ladybug. It had taken years to grow from friendship and fondness into something much more. But it had happened. He did love her. She was bright and cute and lovely and funny and smart and kind and so many good things. She made him feel adored and admired. He liked the reflection of himself that he saw in her eyes. And she gave him nearly anything he ever asked of her, even living in the same house as his prickly father without knowing why.

But Ladybug was brave and bold and beautiful and the most amazing, impressive person he’d ever known. She was his partner. They’d faced down evil together and saved each other’s lives more times than he could count. He needed her like trees need the sun.

What he felt for Marinette was bright, joyous, warm, and comfortable. She was his home. But what he felt for Ladybug was lightning and fire, and as much as he didn’t want to admit it, that was love too.

Sitting on the dirty floor of an alley, Cat Noir groaned into his hands. “This is bad.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for "Cat Blanc".

Marinette flopped into her office chair at home, exhausted and exhilarated at the same time. She really didn’t have time for any kind of break right now, but she had to at least ask, “How bad is it, Tikki?”

“It’s not good, Marinette. This villain isn’t going to be easy to get rid of.”

“What are the odds it’ll attack again today?”

Tikki considered it. “Cat Noir seemed to hurt it a little, and it’s probably still confused. There’s a good chance it will hide for a day or two, but—”

“Good. Then you can tell me all about it after work.” Marinette hauled herself out of her chair and grabbed her purse. It wasn’t the same one she’d had as a teen, of course, but it was one she’d made herself, and it should hide Tikki comfortably enough.

“Marinette, don’t you think—”

Her cell phone rang. It was her assistant, asking where she was. “I’m on my way,” Marinette told her assistant as she shoved some designs and other papers she needed into a satchel. “Keep them comfortable and let them know I’ll be right there.” She hung up and opened her purse. “You can hide in here, Tikki.”

“But the villain—”

“If it’s not going to attack again soon, it can wait. I have a job now, Tikki, and people depend on me to be where I need to be when I need to be there.”

Tikki didn’t look thrilled, but she flew into Marinette’s purse. Peeking at her from its depths, the kwami said, “Okay, Marinette. But we need to talk about that villain as soon as you can.”

“Absolutely. I promise.”

For a moment, Marinette considered transforming and traveling to work as Ladybug, but A) she was out of practice in making sure she could get places unnoticed, B) Ladybug was bound to be big news by now, so anyone spotting her would probably keep their eyes on her as long as possible, and C) that kind of thing was an irresponsible use of her powers.

She checked her watch again, let out a tiny sigh at the inevitability of arriving late, and threw open her office door. She ran down the hall so quickly, she was unable to stop in time when Adrien burst out of their bedroom, not looking her direction. With a yelp, she tried to stop, her arms windmilling, but ran flat into his back anyway. He let out a startled, “Ah!” but stopped himself from falling and turned, grabbing her arms and getting them both steady on their feet again.

“Marinette!” he said with surprise. “You’re still here?”

“I, uh, got working on some stuff and lost track of time.”

“Yeah, m-me too!” He rubbed the back of his head, averting his gaze.

“Is everything okay, Adrien?”

“Yeah. Fine. I’m . . .” His words trailed off, and for a weird second, he was still and quiet. Then, without warning, he pulled her into a tight hug. “I love you, Marinette.”

She squeezed him back. _Mmm. Adrien hug._ But when she let go, he kept holding her. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”

He jumped away from her. “What? Yeah, everything’s fine! But we’re late for work, so we should get going.”

They ran downstairs to the front of the house, where Adrien’s bodyguard already had the car waiting for them. Once they were on the road, Marinette looked over at Adrien as he checked his phone. He seemed normal enough now.

“Whoa.” His eyes went wide.

_Here it comes_, Marinette thought, bracing herself to play along. “What is it?”

Adrien switched on the screens in the seatbacks in front of them. Nadja Chamak’s face appeared over some aerial footage of Ladybug and Cat Noir fighting the monster at the Eiffel Tower.

“They’re back!” Marinette cried and pointed with what she hoped was the correct amount of shock.

“I know, right!” Adrien agreed, gaping at the screen. “All it took was for a new supervillain to show up.”

She laughed. “_All_ it took? That monster looks pretty tough. And that glowing portal’s no aurora borealis.” As she watched, the small heroes onscreen pulled Officer Roger away from the monster. The camera panned to follow the people for only a couple seconds, but when it tried to find the monster again, it couldn’t. Marinette’s mouth pursed in frustration. “And the monster got away.”

Adrien shrugged. “Ladybug and Cat Noir can handle it. Even if they didn’t get it this time, they’ll get it eventually.”

The casual certainty in her husband’s voice warmed Marinette’s heart even as his words made her chest ache. It was only now occurring to her that she’d have to keep her identity as Ladybug secret from him. Secrecy was important, after all. Critical, even. But while it had seemed normal and fine to keep it from her parents, keeping it from her husband felt . . . wrong.

As the news broadcast cut to Nadja Chamak’s commentary, Marinette’s fingers fiddled restlessly in her lap. “I wonder where they’ve been all this time,” she said, stalling while she tried to convince herself that keeping such a huge secret from Adrien wasn’t a betrayal.

“Who knows?” he responded, apparently taking her comment as a serious topic of conversation. “Maybe they never went anywhere.”

She had to smile at how right he was. She imagined turning toward him and saying, ‘You’re right, Adrien. Ladybug’s been here all along. Right here.’ And he’d be surprised at first, but he’d understand and support her and root for her when she had to leave to find a way to fight this new monster.

And then Marinette remembered something that stopped her imagining cold. That one little incident, only known by her and a Bunnyx from a future that was quite possibly a different timeline entirely.

It had been buried deep in her memory, but now that she recalled it, she wondered how it ever could have been shoved that far back. World-ending mistakes were not something that should be easily forgotten about, and she’d only barely managed to undo that other alternate future. It had been the first time she’d gotten up the nerve to actually confess her feelings to Adrien, but she’d done it the wrong way, and somehow he’d figured out that she was Ladybug. And, through some sequence of events that she hadn’t ever known about, it had ended up with Cat Noir figuring out her identity. And _that_—through some additional unknown events—had led to him being akumatized as Cat Blanc and then coming extremely close to literally destroying the planet.

Everything had happened so fast, and Bunnyx had made sure that Ladybug had gotten only the information she absolutely needed to know to fix the problem, but now Marinette desperately wished she had more information about how Adrien finding out her identity could possibly lead to Cat Noir destroying the planet. But she didn’t know the _how_s and _why_s. All she knew was that—in that particular point in time, at least—it absolutely had led to that. And, since she didn’t know how specific the set of circumstances leading to that outcome was, she couldn’t risk triggering that particular apocalyptic future again.

Hawk Moth was gone and the Butterfly Miraculous was safely tucked away in Marinette’s office, so it was extremely unlikely that the Cat Blanc Apocalypse even could happen again. The problem was, since there were so many points in that string of events that were unknown to her, she didn’t know if the ultimate outcome was absolutely impossible, or if it would happen some slightly different way. If Cat Blanc could destroy the world, then she was pretty sure Cat Noir could, too. Not that she could see him doing that if he was in his right mind . . . but akumas weren’t the only things that could put someone out of their right mind.

No. She absolutely couldn’t risk it. At least not until she knew all the _how_s and _why_s. Maybe she could use the Rabbit Miraculous to look into it later, once the current monster crisis was over. But the intuition she’d had when she’d denied Cat Noir’s request to share their identities had been correct. Cat Noir absolutely couldn’t find out who she was. Which meant no one could. Not even Adrien—or maybe, given what had happened last time, maybe especially not Adrien.

Which meant she’d have to lie to him. She’d probably have to come up with lame excuses to leave on short notice. She might end up standing him up for dates. Probably, their relationship was solid enough that he wouldn’t start thinking she was cheating on him. But he might get worried about her. He might try to follow her or look into her activities. And that might lead him into the line of fire. The thought of him chasing after her and ending up caught in some monster’s tentacles made her breath catch. The world was a dangerous place, and even though she would always do her best to protect innocents, she was old enough now to realize that sometimes bad things still happened. She couldn’t tell Adrien the truth, but she couldn’t bear to see him in danger because of her, either.

Reaching for her husband’s hand, she squeezed it. “Adrien, promise me you’ll be careful, okay?”

He blinked at her in shock. “What?”

She pointed at the screen in front of her. “If Hawk Moth is gone, then this new monster is something else. Something we don’t understand. It might be a lot more dangerous than Hawk Moth. We all have to be careful. Ladybug and Cat Noir . . . I’m sure they’ll do their best, but they’re not infallible. They’re only people, like us. I’m sure they make mistakes sometimes, and they can’t be everywhere at once. We all took a lot of stupid risks when we were kids, but we know better now, right?”

#

Adrien’s racing pulse gradually slowed back down to normal. For a second there, he’d been sure that Marinette somehow knew about him being Cat Noir. “Marinette, are you . . . scared?”

“Of course I’m scared. We don’t know what that thing is or what it might do.”

“But Ladybug and Cat Noir—”

“It’s sweet that you have so much faith in them. Really, it is. But don’t you think Ladybug herself would agree that she’s not perfect?”

Adrien frowned. It felt like his heart was still tumbling around inside his chest. He didn’t like hearing Marinette talk about Ladybug, but he was sure that was his own guilt talking. “She probably would,” he reluctantly admitted. “But Marinette, you don’t have to be afraid. That monster has no reason to come after you. Or me.”

“That we know of. But how can we be sure when we don’t know what it wants? And even if it doesn’t come after us, we still need to be careful.”

Adrien brushed Marinette’s cheek with his fingers. When had she become so afraid? “Okay, Marinette. I’ll be careful.” _As careful as I can be, anyway._ Even though he thought he meant it, once the words were out, he was certain he’d lied to her. He was never really careful as Cat Noir. They couldn’t do their jobs as superheroes if they were concerned about being careful.

And here he’d been on the verge of maybe telling her the truth. Maybe he wouldn’t have; he hadn’t quite gotten around to deciding to do it yet. Ladybug had been insistent that no one know their identities, after all. But obeying Ladybug instead of coming clean to his wife had made the guilt that Adrien still felt ache so bad it was almost a physical pain. He couldn’t think of any good reason to keep his identity secret from Marinette. Moreover, he was sure that if he confessed the truth to her—the whole truth, including his feelings for Ladybug—she would understand and help him to keep from doing anything he shouldn’t. If Marinette knew he was still in love with Ladybug, he’d be accountable to her for everything he did or thought or felt. He would _choose_ to be accountable to her. Because he hated that any part of himself wasn’t faithful to her. That wasn’t who he was. He wasn’t a cheater.

But he could see now that if Marinette knew he was Cat Noir, she would worry. He didn’t understand why she was so afraid—she’d never been a fearful person before—but obviously if she knew he was throwing himself directly into danger, her fear would get much worse. And he couldn’t make her worry like that.

Marinette wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, and he returned the hug. “I love you, Adrien,” she said. “You’re the most important thing in the world to me.”

“Same,” he told her. “I love you too, Marinette.” And that was why he couldn’t tell her he would be spending time in the near future throwing himself into danger alongside Ladybug.

But part of him—the hot, aching part of his heart that was _glad_ he wouldn’t have to be accountable—knew he was lying to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the super long delay in updating, all. I got distracted from writing for a while, then I watched the remaining episodes of season 3 on the internet, and ... well, I don't feel in the best mood about this show at the moment, so it's hard to get up motivation to work on this story. I know the way the season ended was just one step on the road to eventually having Marinette and Adrien get together, but I kinda feel like it was a bad place for them to leave it when there's a year before we even get any continuation. I don't know ... It's not like I dislike the show or anything, but I've developed a sort of "blah" feeling about it. However, I am *trying* to not let outside influences like that disrupt me from telling this particular story that I want to tell. So if you're enjoying it and want me to continue, please leave comments letting me know.
> 
> Now that I've seen the rest of season 3, I think I can safely place this story as turning AU right before the two-part season finale. Everything before that should be able to incorporate just fine into the canon of this story, but obviously that finale turned things in a big way, so we'll just have to say that the early scenes of this fic take place prior to that two-parter. So beware of spoilers for all of season 3 up to the finale. Also, we learned a few new lore things about the Miraculouses that will be handy to know, though sadly, not enough about the Goat and Rooster Miraculouses, which will be rather important to this fic. So even though I generally hate theorizing about that stuff, it looks like I'll have to at least in regards to those two Miraculouses. And be aware that I generally try to avoid reading too much about the show (in terms of plans or future developments), considering only what appears in the final episodes as canon, so if anything in this fic contradicts rumors or tweets or anything else, be aware that I don't care and don't consider such things canon (even if they come from the show creators).
> 
> Anyway, here's hoping I can stay motivated to keep writing this fic...
> 
> ETA 1/29: Even though I haven't updated this in a while, I haven't given up on it. I just started working on a separate Miraculous fic, which I'm trying to write in full before posting, and then I hope to get back to this one. I've been re-watching the season 3 eps, and my mood about them is improving. I can appreciate more of where I think they're going with the show, and I'd like to get both these fics done and released before the next season starts.


End file.
